


Who Are You

by NanakiBH



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Childhood Memories, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-30 00:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6400174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NanakiBH/pseuds/NanakiBH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A memory returns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Are You

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this on Tumblr a while back and kind of forgot about it. I don't know whether I intended to post it here, but I decided that I liked it, so here it is. I think I wanted to continue it somehow, but the thought feels complete as it is already.

Late on a Friday night, after finishing up at work, Adam was ready to collapse at home and lay on the couch all weekend. When he returned home, the last thing he expected to see was someone already laying on his couch.

Instinct made him draw the gun he kept hidden in his jacket. He didn't want to admit to being paranoid, but he knew that the neighborhood he lived in wasn't the safest. Calling himself cautious instead, he began carrying a gun for his own safety. He just hadn't thought that he would need it so soon.

At first, he thought that the man on the couch was a burglar, but he appeared to be napping lightly – probably a wandering drunk. The moment the intruder realized that he wasn't alone anymore, he slowly blinked open his eyes and tiredly stretched his arms over his head. Adam followed his movements, keeping his aim trained on his head.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his voice as firm as his stance.

Almost as soon as the man tried to sit up, he decided that he'd made a mistake and laid back down. Turning his head into the cushions, he mumbled something incomprehensible, then rolled over to face the back of the couch. Realizing that the man was probably too drunk to even give a coherent answer, Adam slowly lowered his gun. After a few more seconds of silence passed, he returned it to the hidden pocket in his coat and approached him. Putting a hand on his shoulder, he gave him a gentle shake.

“Hey...”

The situation was steadily becoming more bewildering than threatening.

He tried again. “Hey, can you hear me?” Without turning around, the man swatted at the hand on his shoulder. Growing frustrated with his stubborn behavior, Adam tried harder, giving him a firmer shake. “What's wrong with you? This isn't your house. You gotta get out.”

Finally, the man rolled back over, but he didn't look at him. His eyes were still closed, his hair gracelessly falling across his forehead. “Can't. I'm waiting for her to get back...”

“Her...?”

No one else lived with him, so Adam had no idea what he was talking about. Until he was able to find the opportunity to look around the house, he didn't even understand how he'd been able to find his way in.

The man nodded and sleepily mumbled, “ _Sensei..._ ”

“Sensei...?” At first, he thought that he was just talking nonsense, but an old memory suddenly arose from the back of his memory. “Wait. Are you one of my mother's students? I hate to tell you, sir, but she isn't here anymore.”

Telling him that seemed to finally bring him back to reality. He shot up so quickly that it made Adam reach for his gun again. His hand was wrapped around it inside his jacket, but he hesitated to draw it when he got himself a better look at the stranger's face. He told him to wait a moment and went to turn on the two lamps around the living room.

The man sat up properly with his feet on the floor and placed his head wearily in his hands. “Kid, hey... You said that she isn't here anymore. Do you mean... Do you mean that she...?”

“Huh?” He had to laugh. “What are you so concerned for? She isn't dead, if that's what you're freaking out about.”

His mother was a judo master who occasionally taught her students from home. They even had a practice room in their house, but after she and his father moved out, he hadn't found a new use for that room yet. It just stayed there as a vestige of her presence. When he was younger, he would usually stay in his room when she was teaching so he wouldn't get in the way. He didn't have any interest in learning the techniques back then, but there had been one student of hers who intrigued him and made him want to learn.

Whenever his parents weren't home, he sometimes snuck into that room and tried to mimic the movements he remembered, hoping that he could show off and impress that boy someday. The flame of inspiration had burned strongly within him, but even his young heart had realized that it would be for nothing.

The memory of him was still clear. That older boy had come to their house one day every week for one whole summer. He lived on their street which made it easy for him to visit for lessons, but Adam never saw him apart from those times. He must've only been about seven years old at the time, so that sixteen-year-old boy had been far, far outside his reach.

Seeing this man's face brought it all back to him, blowing the dust off those memories.

“By any chance,” he began, skeptically eyeing his features, “are you... John?”

The man visibly jumped, startled. “Wh- How do you know my name?”

“You just said that you knew my mother. I remember you. You used to live around here and you'd come over for judo lessons.” Relaxing, he rubbed the back of his neck. “I guess you wouldn't remember me. I tended to hide when there were strangers around. Well, and I was just a little kid then, so I probably look a lot different to you, even if you-”

“You're that kid.”

For a stunned moment, Adam just stared at him, unable to believe that he actually remembered him too. “You remember me?”

He laughed, his eyelids drooping tiredly. “Yeah, you were the little kid who ran around with the two toy guns all the time, right? I don't know why I still remember that. I guess you do look a lot different now, too.” He gave him a slow once-over and gave him a wolfish grin. “You really grew up, huh?”

Feeling his face heating up, Adam stood back up and straightened his back. “The gun I have on me now isn't a toy, and I hope you know that I know how to use it.”

John dismissively waved a hand at him and laid himself back down on the couch. “It's fine. I'm not looking to fight.”

That shouldn't have been disappointing to hear. It seemed that there was still a part of him that wanted to challenge him and show him that he was strong too. There wasn't any point in it now, though. He'd gotten pretty good with the techniques he learned on his own, but he'd never found a use for them in his everyday. John, on the other hand, seemed like the type of man who probably ran into dangerous encounters all the time, if the fact that he'd caught him asleep in his living room meant anything. Even when he was younger, he seemed like a rough boy.

But that was what had drawn him to him.

“So? What are you doing here now?” Adam asked. If John wanted to see his mother, he should have found out if she even still lived at that address first before he invited himself in. Though, the fact that he had been passed out drunk probably meant that his visit had been spontaneous.

Gazing up at the ceiling, John let out a sigh. “She ran off again...”

Not that again.

“Can you stop being so vague and explain things normally? I know that might be difficult for you in your current condition, but I can't understand you unless you speak more clearly.”

“Yeah, sorry,” John muttered. “I was at the bar, and the girl I was with ran off. She ditched me and took my bike with her. She isn't answering my calls either, so I've got no idea where she is now and I don't have a way back home. I don't live around here anymore, but I thought that sensei- ...I thought your mom might help me out.”

It didn't sound like the first time something like that had happened to him. He sounded bummed out, but he didn't sound as worried as he should have for a person who'd just had his vehicle stolen.

“Does that happen often? Is she your girlfriend?” He was just asking because the question was relevant at the moment, but he was secretly curious to find out whether his childhood crush was taken.

Strangely, that question seemed difficult for John to answer. He rolled his head back, his gaze hazy as he thought about it. “I dunno. Eva's... Hm. I don't know. We don't live together or anything. I see her occasionally, but she's like the wind; she just comes and goes. I don't think you could say that we're dating or anything like that, but that's fine, isn't it? That kind of thing... That's fine with me.”

That was the most he'd talked yet. Speaking all at once seemed to tired him out and his eyelids began to droop again.

Adam allowed himself to mull over the information he'd been given. A part of him rejoiced, realizing that John didn't seem to be strictly devoted to the woman he mentioned, but a terrible feeling began to creep up from the back of his mind. Adam only knew of one person named Eva – the woman he reluctantly called his best friend who happened to have an on-and-off thing with a man named John. As much as he wanted it to be, it couldn't have been a coincidence.

Staring down at his face a moment longer, Adam turned. “Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back.”

That man had no business being in his house. After he left the living room, Adam looked around and checked the back door and all the windows, but he couldn't for the life of him figure out how John got in. Even though he recalled that John was her favorite, it wouldn't have been like his mother to give a spare key to one of her students. It just made no sense. It was unsettling and somewhat infuriating, and he was annoyed at himself for feeling so impressed by his flawless break-in.

He grabbed an extra pillow for him and went back to the living room with it.

John was still laying there on the couch, his face slightly turned away to shield his eyes from the light of the lamps. It bothered him that he could continue to sleep heedlessly while he stood right there next to him with a gun in his pocket. It bothered him that his friend's name had come up out of nowhere. He hated that someone else had beaten him to him.

He hadn't seen him in years, but the impact John left on him was still there.

Barely breathing, he crouched beside the couch, holding the pillow he'd brought. He didn't know what he was doing, but he wasn't foolish enough to kiss him. Real people didn't act so impulsively. As much as he wanted to know what his lips felt like, that thought was only a delusion; a scene in a movie.

John's eyes opened, but Adam didn't move. He was drunk, so whatever he was thinking as his eyes roamed his face would probably disappear from his head long before he awoke the next morning.

A hand was raised, then clutched loosely in the short hair at the back of Adam's head. It pulled him down those few inches he refused to cross on his own.

It wasn't much of a kiss. John's lips were against his, though, so it qualified as something.

When the hand at the back of his head slipped away, John looked up at him with a dizzy smile.

“You're pretty cute, kid.”

Those words were going to echo in Adam's head for eternity.

He got up, tempted to leave John right where he was and take the pillow with him and carry on with his night, paying him no further attention. It wasn't right that John could barge into his life again all of a sudden without even properly reintroducing himself. Nothing about it was right, but...

“Adam.”

But hearing the person he admired say his name felt right enough.

He couldn't go after that, but he didn't want to stay there in the living room, so he pulled his drunk intruder up with him and forced him to follow him to his room.


End file.
